Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

1855 Reviews:


[George Eliot].
“Art and Belles Lettres,”
The Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review N.S. 9
(April 1, 1856), 625-650.

. . . We have still said nothing of Mr. Ernest Jones’s war strains; of a new poem by the American poet, Mr. Buchanan Reade—a gracefully rhymed, imaginative story; or of another American production which, according to some Transatlantic critics, is to initiate a new school of poetry. This is a poem called “Leaves of Grass,” and, instead of criticizing it, we will give a short extract, typical in every respect, except that it contains none of the very bold expressions by which the author indicates his contempt for the “prejudices” of decency.

“A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands;
How could I answer the child? . . . . I do not know what it is any more than he.
I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven.
Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord,
 A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropped,
Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark,      and say Whose?
Or I guess the grass is itself a child . . . . the produced babe of the vegetation.
Or I guess it is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the      same.
And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves.
*           *           *           *
I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals . . . . they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied . . . . not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.”


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